Category: Hardware

Chromebook Users of Rio Rancho

I live in Rio Rancho, New Mexico and my kids attend the Rio Rancho Public Schools District.  One of the changes that have happened over the last couple of years in the district is the adoption of the Google Education infrastructure and the use of Chrombooks throughout all the schools.  I’ve seen investment in classrooms where teachers now have over 30 chromebooks to use for classroom instruction.

With these changes, what I have not seen is any general education for the students, siblings, or parents in the community (and surrounding tribal communities).  I decided to try and change that with the free resources available through the City of Rio Rancho.

I am a volunteer with the city and this enabled me to teach my Raspberry Pi classes in 2017 at the Loma Colorado Public Library.  This library has great resources … rooms, tables, chairs, laptops, monitors, keyboards, mice, and great internet bandwith!  So all I really needed to do was schedule and coordinate to get this new set of classes started.

One of the challenges in starting anything new is awareness, so I decided to use the Meetup.com to raise awareness initially, then moved on to a email list.  The email list page is at:

https://groups.io/g/cuorr

We had our first class/meetup on July 27, 2019 at the Loma Colorado Public Library Auditorium, I brought 12 Chromebooks for folks to use … we had 11 people attend, some hands on time, and many questions around the Chromebook and Google services.  I was excited about the attendance and am looking at holding this class once a month for now and maybe more frequent based on interest and demand.

I will be scheduling new meetups or classes via meetup.com so, keep an eye on this website for new events or check out to the library calendar.

– Dom

NB3F Mobile App Contest Submission

So proud of my son Kyle and a fellow 8th grader Kaiya for spending more than 15 hours going through the IBM Design Thinking process to develop a mobile app design to compete in the Notah Begay III Foundation National Youth App Contest.  The goal of the contest was to get native youth (grades 8 to 12) to design a mobile app to combat obesity and type 2 diabetes among native american youth through exercise and diet.  One key to getting native youth hooked into mobile technology design and development is to show them the various tasks related to hardware and software design.  They had fun learning user centered design and creating content for the contest which was due on 10/31/2018.

Here are a couple images from their submission and a link to their NB3F mobile app design document.

Also I was very happy FatPipe Rio Rancho opened up in September 2018, this company provided a nice meeting space (in between all the sports and other student activities which forced us to meet in the evenings and weekends) to collaborate and get through the design process.  Thanks FatPipe Rio Rancho!

– Dom

A successful first Raspberry Pi Hands On Workshop at Rio Rancho Loma Colorado Public Library

This last weekend (Saturday 2/25), I held my first Introduction to the Raspberry Pi Hands on Workshop at the Loma Colorado Public Library in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.  I had a total of 8 attendees (full house) ranging from youth to adults that wanted to know more about this inexpensive computer.  Feedback was great and it ranged from having a great experience with a new educational computer to interest in physical compute (using the GPIO pins) and more advanced topics.

I am looking forward to refining the content for the future hands on workshops for the following teach dates:

  • March 18, 2017
  • April 8, 2017
  • April 29, 2017
  • May 20, 2017

Don’t forget, if you want to sign up for a workshop, you need to use the Loma Colorado Calendar of Events page.

If you want to see all the Raspberry Pi related posts on my blog, click on this link … https://dompruitt.com/raspberry-pi-rio-rancho-albuquerque-new-mexico/

Here are several pictures from the class:

rpihow1

rpihow2

rpihow3

I also want to thank the City of Rio Rancho and the Loma Colorado Public Library staff, the facility is a great place to teach about technology, the support was awesome to make this event happen, and the internet access speeds are some of the best in the state!

– Dominic

 

Free Raspberry Pi classes at Loma Colorado Public Library in Rio Rancho, New Mexico – #RaspberryPiNM

img_6046

After some back and forth with the local library, I will now be teaching some free Raspberry Pi computer classes at the Loma Colorado Public Library in Rio Rancho, NM starting at the end of February 2017 (#RaspberryPiNM).  Space is limited because this is a hands on event, so keep a eye out for the signup links on the Rio Rancho Public Libraries Calendar of Events page.

The planned dates are as follows:

  • February 25, 2017 (start with 8 students)
  • March 18, 2017
  • April 8, 2017
  • April 29, 2017
  • May 20, 2017

The content of the class will be based on some previous teachings on the Raspberry Pi which I have included here:

rpi-101-presentation

https://dompruitt.com/2016/10/01/raspberry-pi-101-presentation-and-hands-on-station-at-rrps-napac-meeting/

– Dominic

 

Raspberry Pi 3 Chromium Browser with Adobe Flash Player Plugin

Ok, the Raspberry Pi 3 just keeps getting better … especially for kids.

One of the latest updates along with the PIXEL user interface is the new update that added the Chromium browser AND an Adobe Flash Player plugin!  This is better than using Iceweasel which was changed to Firefox recently.  The resulting change drives the processor to a bit above 50% when playing videos, but the bang you get out of these new features is awesome.  Also notice you can easily switch from HDMI or Analog Audio output with the right mouse click on the speaker icon in the system tray.

I tried out the new combinations with YouTube and Starfall (my kids loved this site growing up).

rpi3chromiumytwanalogaudio

If you want the flash components to automatically start you need to check this box on the browser plugins setting page, otherwise you have to right mouse click on the flash puzzle icon and say run every time flash is used.

rpi3chromiumflashpluginsetting

Starfall.com interface below … I’m thinking about how our local Montessori school can use some Raspberry Pi 3 computers to start teaching keyboarding and mousing skills earlier since almost all standardized school testing requires computer proficiency now.

rpi3chromiumstarfall